


brilliant burning lights

by huphilpuffs



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Carpenter AU, Established Relationship, M/M, vaguely inspired by My Time at Portia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 04:30:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18771223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huphilpuffs/pseuds/huphilpuffs
Summary: After the apocalypse ends, Dan and Phil run a workshop to help with the rebuilding efforts.





	brilliant burning lights

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alittledizzy (dizzy)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dizzy/gifts).



> Happy birthday Mandy! Thank you so much for being such a constant fandom friend to so many of us, and such a supporter of fandom and fanworks and fanfic authors in the phandom. I appreciate everything you do for our community so much. My apologies that the fic is loosely based on an indie game you might not have ever heard of (apocafic isn't my forte but I tried). I hope it's still a good little slice of life fic that you enjoy! Have a great day and enjoy all the fics! <3

It’s still weird to wake to warm sun rays shining across his face.

Dan doesn’t think he’ll ever get used to it. Even if the Age of Darkness didn’t ruin his body for the world, he spent too many years under a dark sky to get used to how bright it is now. Some days, just for a moment, when his eyes sting and he wants to ignore the still unfamiliar world, he wonders if it’s actually better.

But then Phil groans next to him, stretching out so his leg rubs against the entire length of Dan’s. He reaches out, still half asleep and fully clumsy, and just about smacks Dan in the face.

“Don’t wanna get up,” he grumbles.

Dan cracks a smile, eyes still closed. He so wishes he could reach over, wrap an arm around Phil and huddle in bed like he’s never really been able to. That was the point of ending the Age of Darkness, right?  To live a simple, happy life, without monsters or war or the constant burden of blackness.

That’s not what it is, though, not yet. Not for them.

There’s a whole world to rebuild. And by some miracle, he and Phil get to be a part of it.

“Have to,” says Dan. “We have a workshop to run or whatever.”

Phil grumbles. “Fuck the workshop.”

Dan chuckles, low and still a little sleepy. When he finally cracks his eyes open, he sees even Phil is smiling, head half pressed into the pillow. The sun paints streaks across his cheek, gleams in his hair, as dark as the sky used to be. Dan leans over, presses a kiss to Phil’s cheek, and decides that mornings like these are worth all the hassle.

“I’m gonna get coffee from Django’s, okay? We have a bunch of furniture to make today.”

Phil grunts, but his smile quirks at the corner of his mouth.

\---

They drink coffee in bed, tucked under a scratchy blanket made of wool.

There’s a sofa in the corner, but it’s old and the cushions are squished and Dan can’t remember the last time he’s sat on it. Across the room, there’s the first dining set they’d ever made, one table leg balancing on a book from before the Age of Darkness, and all the chairs so wobbly Phil claims they make him dizzy.

Part of Dan thinks it’s just a ploy to stay tucked in bed a little while longer.

His foot nudges against Phil’s. “We should add walls,” he says, “when we get better at this whole building thing.”

“Shouldn’t we fix the existing ones first?”

Dan shrugs. There’s been holes in the walls since they moved in, when an old man who’d been leading the rebuilding efforts had looked at them and said: _You’re big boys. You could run a workshop._

The house was built hastily. They all were, dotting the landscape in places where the ground wasn’t ravaged by monsters, littered with the remnants of the world that once was.

“I don’t mind them,” he says.

Phil chuckles. “That’s cause you’re always warm.”

“You’ve never complained.”

Phil smiles. Under the blanket, his leg loops over Dan’s. Back in the Age of Darkness, this is the type of day they’d have spent in bed, ignoring the horror  of the world outside just to spend time with each other.

Now, they have a job to do, friends to help, a community to maintain. The world is hardly recognizable.

“Maybe this summer,” says Phil. “They say it’s gonna keep being warmer, the longer the light’s back.”

“Then you’ll be glad for the breeze, you spoon.”

Phil’s face scrunches up. He reaches over, shoves at Dan’s shoulder. “And you just want to leave the holes there cause you know it’ll be _your_ job to fix them, you oaf.”

\---

Dan squeezes into the one pair of jeans he owns.

Across the room, Phil does the same, pulling a shirt over his head and rolling his shoulders. Dan knows he’s sore. They both are. It’s only been a few months and his body still isn’t used to having gone from hiding away in dark corners of the only safe places they could find to running a workshop, and all the work that comes with that.

There’s an axe leaning against the wall outside their house. Dan’s the only one who uses it.

Neither one of them are built for construction. Dan’s heard the stories of the technology that existed before the Age of Darkness, about artificial intelligence and robots and automated work. The Church of Light, up on the hill, talks about how that’s what caused the Age of Darkness.

Dan thinks he would have been one of the people who relied on robots to do his work.

Phil probably would have been, too.

He checks the furnaces and their material supplies, as Dan throws the axe over his shoulder and prepares to head out. It still feels unnatural in his hand. He’s not sure that’ll ever change.

“Everything’s good,” says Phil. “You ready to go?”

When they first started, every morning began with _I’m coming with you._

That’s what it used to be like. No one went anywhere alone. After years of watching people leave and never come home, neither of them were quite used to feeling safe. Phil still doesn’t feel safe, though he’ll only say so in the privacy of their home, when the sky is dark, though never as much as it used to be.

Today, his hand curls around Dan’s arm, and he lets Dan lead him off towards the forest.

\---

Dan’s toes ache as he jams them into a tree.

It’s on purpose. Phil watches, then stares up at the leaves to watch a single apple fall from the branches. It hits the ground with a thud, probably bruises on one side.

Phil still grins as he takes the first bite. Dan moans as he takes the second.

They sit at the bottom of the tree. There’s a pile of wood they’ve lugged across the forest next to them. Dan’s hands ache from holding the axe. His back aches from carrying things.

He passes the apple back to Phil and smiles up at the sky.

The sun is high now, peeking out from between bright white clouds. They used to be black, like the ash that lays at the bottom of the furnaces back home. The apples used to be sour, unripe. People would bring them back to camp and dry them in bags, ration them and hand them out to each family.

Phil passes the apple back. Dan moans around this bite, too, watching Phil roll his eyes.

“Shut up,” he says. “I’m allowed to like fruit.”

“We all like fruit,” says Phil. “You’re the only one who needs to get a room with it.”

“Oi.” He tosses the apple. It misses Phil, rolling across the grass. Phil just laughs. He picks up the apple, plucks a few blades of grass from where they’ve eaten, and takes another bite.

There’s probably a dozen more up in the tree, but wasting food still doesn’t feel like an option.

\---

Dan’s exhausted by the time they get back.

He shoves the wood into their pile, accumulated slowly over months of rebuilding, and lies down in the middle of their garden. It tickles his ears, itches under the edge of his tunic.

He doesn’t care. It’s bright green again and today is the type of day when he wants to just enjoy it.

Phil refreshes the fuel in the furnaces. He organizes their collection of materials into chests, and sets Dan’s tools by the door. When he goes to start working on their latest project, a set of stools for the park, Dan grins.

“Know what’s hot?” he says.

“Your dashing boyfriend?”

“Nope,” says Dan, popping the p. “The furnaces.”

Phil looks over his shoulder, squinting. “Rude.”

He goes back to his work. Dan’s teeth dig into his lower lip, privately watching the way Phil’s shoulders flex as he works. His body’s grown stronger since they started, his arms bulging more, his stomach more lean. A side effect of all the work, probably, now that they don’t spend their time tucked away in safe houses.

“Come here,” says Dan.

“We have commissions to fill.”

“Don’t care,” he says. “The new park can wait. I want to watch the sunset with my hot boyfriend.”

Phil chuckles. On another day, he might be adamant that they finish their work.

“Oh so now that you want to make out, I’m hot, huh?”

Dan grins. Phil’s already set down his tools. He turns around, smiles back.

Today, it doesn’t take much coaxing to get Phil to lay down on the ground. He tucks his head against Dan’s shoulder, drapes an arm over his middle.

Night is starting to fall. Phil doesn’t complain about Dan being warm, not now.

They don’t say a word, watching the sky swirl in shades of pink and orange.

\---

Work stays undone. The wood pile is crooked and might tumble in the wind. The furnaces don’t get refueled.

Phil lies next to him, naked, tucked under their itchy wool blanket. His breaths are slow, steady. Dan knows he’s already fallen asleep.

Dan doesn’t fall asleep quite so easily.

There was a time when he spent every night waiting up for a monster to break into their home, steal the fragile stability they’d built. The darkness was all they’d ever known, in all it’s terrifying obscurity.

Some days, Dan misses it.

Some nights, he wraps his arms tighter around Phil, and worries the black sky means the Age of Darkness will return.

He presses a kiss to Phil’s head. The only response is a sigh.

It’s enough to have Dan smiling as he closes his eyes.


End file.
